Edgar Vincent, 1st Viscount D'Abernon

Early life

Vincent was the youngest son of Sir Frederick Vincent, 11th Baronet, of Stoke D'Abernon (1798–1883) and his second wife, Maria Copley (d. 1899). He was born at Slinfold, West Sussex and educated at Eton College for the diplomatic service. Instead, he spent five years as a member of the Coldstream Guards before coming into the service as secretary to Lord Edmond FitzMaurice, Queen's Commissioner on the East Rumelian Question. He was himself appointed Commissioner for the Evacuation of Thessaly (ceded to Greece by Turkey) and advised the Egyptian government on financial matters from 1883 to 1889.

Ottoman Bank crash

That year he became governor of the Imperial Ottoman Bank. One of his policies was to get the Bank involved in South African mining shares on European stock exchanges. This caused a speculation craze in Constantinople where tens of thousands of people bought South African mining shares, a lot of them with money loaned from the Ottoman Bank. This led to a run on the Bank in late 1895 and then a crash in the share values, followed by an international panic and the financial ruin of many of those who invested in the shares. Vincent was heavily condemned for his role in the disaster, though he personally made a fortune from the shares.

In 1896 the banking office in Constantinople was occupied by a group of armed Armenians who threatened to destroy the building with bombs. Vincent escaped through a skylight and notified the Turkish authorities at the Sublime Porte and secured a negotiator from the Russian Embassy. The attackers agreed to surrender their bombs in exchange for safe passage to exile in France, being conducted on Sir Edgar's private vessel.

Member of Parliament

In 1899 he was elected a Conservative Member of Parliament for Exeter. He was less a true Conservative than a personal devotee of the Conservative leader, A. J. Balfour. He held the seat until losing to a Liberal in 1906. He opposed the Conservative policy of Tariff Reform and unsuccessfully stood for the Liberal Party in Colchester in December 1910. In July 1914 he was raised to the peerage as Baron D'Abernon of Esher, Surrey, upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith.

Poland

D'Abernon was part of the Interallied Mission to Poland in July 1920, during the Polish-Soviet War. Later this experience provided material for his book The Eighteenth Decisive Battle of the World: Warsaw, 1920 (1931).

Ambassador to Germany

From 1920 to 1925 D'Abernon was the British Ambassador to Berlin. In September 1921 he wrote that the success of the Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control, which reported on German disarmament, meant that there would be no military danger from Germany for many years and that it would be impossible for the Germans to conceal the manufacture of heavy weaponry. In February 1922 he criticised the idea of a military alliance between Britain and France:

The fundamental criticism...is that England undertakes definite and very extensive responsibilities in order to avoid a danger which she believes to be largely imaginary. An armed attack by Germany on France within the next twenty-five years is admittedly improbable, an attack by Germany on England in the same period even more so...the whole tone of the French is to assume that the real danger to the future peace of Europe is military aggression by Germany.

On 9 February 1925 D'Abernon wrote that it was necessary "to abandon the view that Germans are such congenital liars that there is no practical advantage in obtaining from them any engagement or declaration. On this assumption progress is impossible. Personally I regard the Germans as more reliable and more bound to written engagements than many other nations".

Lord Vansittart called D'Abernon "the pioneer of appeasement". General J. H. Morgan also called D'Abernon "the apostle of 'appeasement' and did not believe in the possibility, much less the probability, of a German military revival".

Honours

D'Abernon was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1887, promoted to Knight Grand Cross in 1917, and made Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1926. He joined the Privy Council in 1920, was created Baron D'Abernon, of Esher in the county of Surrey, in 1914 and elevated to Viscount D'Abernon, of Esher and Stoke d'Abernon in the county of Surrey, in 1926. He succeeded his elder brother as 16th Baronet of Stoke d'Abernon in 1936.

Directorships

After his retirement from the foreign service, D'Abernon devoted his time to directorships of numerous domestic organisations such as the Lawn Tennis Association, the Race Course Betting Control Board, the Medical Research Council, and the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, and the Royal Mint advisory committee. He was also a trustee of the National and Tate Galleries, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1934. He was also President of the Royal Statistical Society from 1926 to 1928.

Personal life

D'Abernon married the renowned beauty Helen Venetia Duncombe in 1890. Together they shared a love of society and the fine arts, especially English painting. Both had portraits made by John Singer Sargent. She posed for hers in 1904 at their villa, the Palazzo Giustiniani, in Venice. Vincent was Chairman of the royal commission on National Museums and Galleries, which published its report in 1928. The bulk of their art collection was sold at auction in 1929. Two works once in their collection are in the National Gallery, three at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and others at the (Mellon) Yale Center for British Art and other museums.

D'Abernon died of hypostatic pneumonia and Parkinson's disease at Hove in November 1941. As the couple were childless, his titles became extinct when he died.

Styles and honours

Works